Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Teamwork report, commissioned by the HSE, is supposed to be driving this process but it states no services should be removed from local hospitals until better services are in their place. However, the downgrading of Monaghan General Hospital within two years will mean acute patients will be pushed off to the hospitals in Cavan and Drogheda which currently account for 20% of the national trolley count and are already overwhelmed according to the stated evidence of their dedicated staff.

The Taoiseach should not reply by stating the regional centres of medical excellence are the alternative. There is no contradiction between local hospitals, where day surgical procedures and minor and intermediate surgery are carried out, and centres of excellence for more serious procedures. More significantly, no date has ever been set for establishing centres of medical excellence. It will happen in the dim and distant future. Within two years, if the Tánaiste's writ runs, all the aforesaid services will be lost from Monaghan General Hospital. She has already in place an implementation group to try to put this into effect.

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